Letter: Use common sense on unused vacation time

Sunday

Jul 20, 2014 at 10:30 AM

Wait! Wait! Please, please, don’t tell me that you are even thinking about paying city and county employees double time for not taking their vacation days. The Rockford Register Star has reported that all city and county employees are provided an opportunity to take their vacation days within a two-year period. Common sense applies here in private industry when the first or second calendar year ends all accrued and unused vacation time is lost.

If a public employee chooses to work rather than taking their vacation days before the end of the second calendar year, then they have already been paid for the workday/vacation day during the course of the year or two. To pay the employee again for unused vacation days after the two-year period has ended doubles the payroll costs and is an egregious waste of

the public’s money.

Surely there are no verbal or written employee contracts that say that the employee will be paid double time if they fail to take their vacation days during the allocated two-year period. All of our citizens would expect that all employees are hired because they were considered to be responsible enough to do a specific task by following established procedures and policies.

Then there is nothing extraordinary about expecting these responsible employees to follow the established policy to use their vacation time within the policy period. Therefore, one would never expect it would be necessary for a supervisor to “brandish thy rod and drive the employee hither and yon” in order to have them take a vacation.

This is a clarion call for the public to speak up and say, “Enough, enough, put a quick end to this new abuse of the public’s tax money.” Email Mayor Larry Morrissey at larry.morrissey@rockfordil.gov and Chairman Scott Christensen at countyboardchairmansoffice@wincoil.us.